Wwyd- primary admissions

[Birnamwood]

I applied for two primary schools way back when and both of them are very good schools. One is in catchment and the other is in the next door village where we are aiming to move to within the next couple of years.

We had our results yesterday and ds1 has been accepted into the catchment school, which I am happy about as its a good school and just down the road BUT since I've found out I've had a nagging gut feeling that this will be the wrong school for ds. It's quite large and has an intake of 60 whereas the village school has an intake of 28. I just feel that ds will not thrive in such a busy environment, he is quite shy and quiet and I feel he'll get a bit 'lost' within the year iyswim. The village school just seemed more of a family and more caring than the local school ie the head knew every child's name and stage of development and was so positive and caring towards the pupils.

Am I being pfb? Or should I listen to my gut feeling and start the appeal process? Dp thinks we should send him to the local school as its easier to get to but that doesn't really affect him as it would be me doing the school run anyway!

In your shoes I'd go for the local school then your son will be close to his new friends and be able do after school stuff more easily.

I don't know where you are. But where we are there are still another three rounds of allocations to go. So all we have to do is notify our LEA that whilst accepting the offer they've made us, we'd still like to be considered candidates for school(s) X,Y,Z in that order. Our LEA said that's fine. The Inclusions and Allocations Dept wrote back to me via email. (In all honesty, after the next three rounds nothing might have changed. Nobody's promised us anything. They've just said our new preferences are OK.)

A two-form entry school really isn't that busy, either.

sorry you think thats a large school? I have applied to a small school that has 60 intake. The one near me has an intake of 150! now thats huge!

Ghoul- that is something to consider but we are hoping to move to the village in the near future (if these bloody house renovations ever end!) so he would have to make new friends when we move. The village is only a mile and a half away anyway.

Learn- as far as I know there is only one round of admissions in this area, I've only had the results online though as we've not had the letter yet so there may be more info there.

Thank you both for Your replies

150?! Wow, that's massive puts it into perspective for me!

my dd is in a school with a 60 intake - 450 in total. Tbh i don't think it'll make much difference - dds school is 2 classes of 30 so even with your 28 the class size will be the same. Also i imagine infants and junior classrooms are split, possibly different rooms on same site - if so, like my dd, its unlikely your ds will mix with the juniors thus only really experience the part of the school aimed for reception iyswim?

DDs year 1 class is in the same part of the building as reception and she never ventures to the next door section of the juniors. A 28 intake is not much different to 60 which would be 2 full classes too

Birnamwood,
This all comes down to how certain are you that you will be moving to this village. If you were staying put, then you would be very happy that your son is going to the good local school.
I think that if you are confident that you will move in the next 12 months that you should go to appeal and see where that gets you. It does not make any difference to the fact that you have accepted the local school (I presume), only if you get a place on appeal will you relinguish the current place.
With an admission number of 28, the admission appeal will not be an infant class size case and being blunt if I was on the panel I would be asking some very serious questions as to why the classroom cannot accommodate 30 pupils. Only if it was a really small classroom would I be accepting 28 maximum in the class. It would be worth you checking exactly how many there are in the different classes in the village school, I would suspect some have 30 in!
I am a governor at a 60 admission primary school and I know that the head knows every one of the 420 in the school, so your gut feeling about the catchment school may well be right. But on the opposite side of the coin a caring head teacher could actually be a lousy leader / manager and the school a basket case. So check what the Ofsted report says and that it was when the current head was in post.

Admission, thank you.

I know for a fact that we won't be moving until at least next summer as we still have to complete the renovations on this house and from experience, it could take at least 6mths to sell, if not longer.

As for the class sizes, that was a figure that was quoted by the head as an average across the school years, it is a small school and doesn't have enough children in the village to fill the 28/30 spaces so has to take some out of catchment. It is also a c of e school so I guess children who are part of that faith/christened took preference over those who aren't (neither of mine are).

Both of the schools are rated ofsted outstanding, with the current heads being in place with the most recent inspection so I can't even differentiate between them on that!

I suspect that if I took it to appeal I would be laughed out of the room with reasons such as pfbitis and a possibility of maybe moving to the village and some unknown point in the future!

Thank you for helping me make my mind up, I'll leave things as they are and try to stop being so precious :)